18th-century Judge Quotes

James Wilson

Roger B. Taney

William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield

Edward Law, 1st Baron Ellenborough

Charles Abbott, 1st Baron Tenterden

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon

Joseph Hopkinson

The family consists of those who live under the same roof with the pater familias; those who form (if I may use the expression) his fire-side.

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon

Ideas are free. But while the author confines them to his study, they are like birds in a cage, which none but he can have a right to let fly : for till he thinks proper to emancipate them, they are under his own dominion.

We cannot explore any mode of sentencing a man to imprisonment, who is imprisoned already, but by tacking one imprisonment to the other.

John Eardley Wilmot

We cannot suffer a person by his affidavit to arraign the whole justice of the country and its administration.

Charles Abbott, 1st Baron Tenterden

I wish popularity; but it is that popularity which follows, not that which is run after--it is that popularity which sooner or later never fails to do justice to the pursuit of noble ends by noble means.

William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield

Though the mere opinion of an Attorney- or Solicitor-General ought not to be cited, yet coupled with the fact, it may have some weight as showing the general sense of professional men.

William Henry Ashurst

Man, fearfully and wonderfully made, is the workmanship of his all perfect Creator: A State; useful and valuable as the contrivance is, is the inferior contrivance of man; and from his native dignity derives all its acquired importance.

Prisoner, God has given you good abilities, instead of which you go about the country stealing ducks.

It seems to me that the argument of the defendant's counsel blows hot and cold at the same time.

Sir Francis Buller, 1st Baronet

It is of the greatest importance that the administration of justice should not only be free from spot or blame, but that it should be, so far as human infirmity could allow it to become, as free from all suspicion.

Edward Law, 1st Baron Ellenborough

On hearing that his butler was leaving because he could not take Lady Braxfield's scolding anymore:

Lord! ye've little to complain o': ye may be thankfu' ye're no married to her.

Robert McQueen, Lord Braxfield

Hail, Columbia! happy land!
Hail, ye heroes! heaven-born band!
Who fought and bled in Freedom's cause,
Who fought and bled in Freedom's cause,
And when the storm of war was gone,
Enjoyed the peace your valor won.
Let independence be our boast,
Ever mindful what it cost;
Ever grateful for the prize,
Let its altar reach the skies!

Joseph Hopkinson

On slaves and their descendants:

They are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word "citizens" in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.